Welcome, Simple Marketing for Smart People reader.
Billy here, and as a part of your book bonuses, you’ll get to see real-life examples of the Simple Marketing for Smart People approach in action. I choose these examples because they exemplify our classier approach to marketing.
You’ll find three examples. The first is from a famous copywriter’s business, and the second two are examples from my 1-on-1 clients.
Let’s jump into the examples!
This first one is not from a client, but a famed copywriter. You’ve heard his name before because he is mentioned in the book: Gary Bencivenga
Gary’s business is a monthly club that delivers olive oil to your doorstep. But not just any olive oil—fresh pressed olive oil. You may be asking, “What’s so great about fresh-pressed olive oil?”
Nearly all of Gary’s potential customers are asking that question, and as a professional copywriter, Gary knows what he must do: Build Belief.
Check out how he does it via the “8 Reasons Why” marketing piece below.
Notice how he’s making an argument for fresh-pressed olive oil? Do you see how he’s instilling beliefs about their olive oil? Can you imagine how much more likely is a potential customer to try their product after reading Gary’s list versus not reading it?
Read his marketing piece below:
Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club.pdf
Tip: If you only see the embedded version of the PDF, hover over the top-right corner to download the file.
My client, Kourosh Dini, is a psychiatrist who helps people with ADHD and what he calls “wandering mind” manage their relationship with work.
He makes the argument that most approaches to work use force. His approach, however, doesn’t use force but rather a technique he calls making “visits.”
Below, you’ll find one of his marketing emails.
Notice it doesn’t look like marketing material. It’s gentle, empathetic, and educational. That’s a hallmark of SMSP approach. But this subtle approach is needed to get the buy-in needed from prospects before you ask them to buy.
In Kourosh’s situation, he needs his reader to believe that they have been taking a faulty approach to their work. After all, most of his readers have never heard of a force-based approach.
Only once Kourosh instills the belief “I’ve been taking a faulty approach to work” can he make the argument for his recommended approach, the Visit-based approach. And even though his approach his gentler, because he’s focused on instilling beliefs, he wins far more customers than competitors who simply pitch their products without the necessary Belief Building.
Enjoy Kourosh’s email. (It was accompanied by a video with the same content.)
SMSP - Bonus - Force Based Work.pdf
Tip: If you only see the embedded version of the PDF, hover over the top-right corner to download the file.
I saved my favorite for last. This final example is from my client, Leila Gharani. She’s a phenomenal Excel teacher with the top-notch online courses. And this is coming from a guy (yours truly) who knows Excel inside and out from my days in the energy industry.
Leila was releasing a new course on a new Microsoft software and hired me to help with its marketing.
The new software is called Power BI and it helps Excels users create dashboards and nice-looking reports around their data. It’s a huge help for people who work with data.
Our task was to make the argument that learning Power BI was necessary to future-proof your career. We created many pieces of marketing content for this campaign and used many different forms of proof, but can you spot the main forms of proof we used in this email below?
We mainly used ethos and logos. Ethos in the form of the company we featured, Gartner, which is well-respected among her students. And logos in the form of data and the logical argument we made around the increased adoption of Power BI by companies.
This email and marketing campaign were a massive success, bringing mid-six figures in revenue to her online course over the span of a couple weeks.
Enjoy the email. It shows how marketing can informative and helpful to the reader—even if they don’t buy.
Tip: If you only see the embedded version of the PDF, hover over the top-right corner to download the file.